'I Realised The Way I Was Breathing Had Increased My Anxiety and Panic Attacks'

Everyone has a story,’ says the petite blonde woman propping my head up with pillows. ‘But here, you don’t have to tell it.’ To ears either side of a clinically anxious mind – all talked out by counselling – this is sweet music.

I’m done with talking, but I still need help. It’s been one month and 15 days since I last saw my blood-flooded, gasping reflection in the bathroom mirror having one of my panic attacks. Quite a while, by my standards. But uncertainty, intense vigilance and the constant hum of anxiety remain, never quite allowing me to relax.

So I’ve come to a ‘breathwork’ class that, at a cost of £90, aims to teach me how to breathe – you know, properly breathe – in an effort to achieve lasting calm and breakup with panic attacks.

WHAT'S 'NOW AGE' WELLNESS?

Breathwork studios are suddenly in operation nationwide. The one I’m trying is in a north London yoga studio that embodies what’s been termed ‘Now Age’ wellness – think kundalini yoga, reiki healing and gong baths, served up to striving, strung-out twenty and thirty-somethings by bright-eyed Lululemon-sporting practitioners.

Panic attack treatments

The goal, I’m told, is to bring the breather face to face with their baggage and dislodge ‘blockages’ too deep to be probed by talk therapy. How exactly? ‘By getting you to breathe continuously through your chest and belly, we’re opening up the respiratory system to its full capacity,’ explains Rebecca Dennis, my, er, trained ‘transformational breath facilitator’.

‘This enables you to let go of any past emotional or physical trauma you’ve been holding onto in your body.’ Thus helping you deal with anxiety you may not know the cause of.

Yes, it sounds totally unscientific, but in fact the idea, which is common in eastern health practices, was popularised in the west by Harvard cardiologist Dr Herbert Benson in the 1970s. The claim is that the movement of the diaphragm massages other organs and encourages what Benson termed ‘full oxygen exchange’.

Meaning? More oxygen enters the body as more carbon dioxide leaves it, slowing the heart rate and stabilising blood pressure – two things that, as Benson noted, are the exact opposite of an anxious response and key to reducing panic attacks.

Panic attack help – why breathing works

So, can your breath actually act like Cillit Bang for your emotional blockages? Predictably, the science is thin on the ground. But there is a wealth of research on breath and anxiety and panic attacks.

A 2015 review of studies in the journal Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback concluded that slow, deep breathing techniques shift the nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic (its rest and digest) mode.

Meanwhile, ongoing research at the University of Southampton found that 20 minutes of yogic breathing, five times a week, reduced the physical and psychological symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder in patients who hadn’t responded to common anxiety meds such as Prozac or Lyrica.

Even the science backs up that breath, when deployed well, is mind-altering stuff.

Anxiety attack symptoms

But bad breathing? Well, that can really mess you up. ‘When you’re anxious, you end up breathing out more than you need to, which causes the levels of carbon dioxide in your blood to drop,’ explains Professor Stephen Spiro, clinical adviser to the British Lung Foundation. And what happens next? ‘The low CO2 levels make the blood more alkaline, which acts as an alarm signal for the brain,’ adds Dr Sunjeev Kamboj, a pharmacology expert at University College London.

Taken to the extreme, bad breathing can turn anxiety into a full-blown panic attack: as you start to breathe quicker, your body enters fight or flight mode.

‘Your sympathetic nervous system is activated when the central nervous system detects that you feel under threat,’ says Dr Kamboj.

‘The threat is then relayed to the amygdala, the brain’s fear centre. What follows is a chain of biochemical events that trigger the adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. Next, acid censors in the brain pick up the pH imbalance, which in turn activate your panic responses.’

Cue hyperventilation and tetany, that tingly-fingered sensation which often follows. Not a state you want to be in.

And that’s a situation I want to learn to avoid. I want a cure or at least a better-coping strategy for how to cure my anxiety.

So after checking my natural breathing rhythm (shallow, not reaching up to my chest or below my belly button; classic bad breathing), Dennis teaches me the technique: a two-beat inhale, going deep into my belly (similar in theory to the diaphragmatic breathing technique that Benson studied), then my chest, immediately followed by a short exhale.

We practise the technique in chunks for the next 45 minutes as Dennis, with hands on my belly, guides me.

‘Like an intense meditation, this breathing is designed to take you into an altered state,’ says Dennis.

‘Try not to fight what comes up.’ Scary words to an anxious mind – still, I close my eyes.

Initially, my mind wanders and I laugh (out loud) at the ridiculous situation. I also struggle at first to breathe above my bra strap, the area where – so goes breathwork theory – the body holds on to fear we can’t deal with. But as the breath begins to flow and the oxygen floods my brain,

I feel as though I am sinking into a cocoon. Memories start popping up – ranging from images to full-on bodily sensations that I start to almost re-feel. It’s decidedly odd.

After 20 minutes of my second breathing session (three are recommended), I feel familiar sensations coming on: the lump in my throat rises and I want to gasp. I do, a little, but with encouragement from Dennis, I continue to breathe hard into the restriction in my chest (hippy pseudo science aside, I really do feel a blockage there).

My mind and body now recall a memory that seems very realistic, which I haven’t touched in six months of therapy. I’m lying in hospital, my body weakened by severe, life-threatening septic shock and mind altered thanks to IV painkillers. I want to sob, but instead I let out a few bleats and keep breathing, until it fades back into a memory again.

Breathing as panic attack help – did it work?

So, 10 days after my final session, am I cured? Jumpiness, email terror and midweek nervous nosedives suggest not. But if not transformed, then informed. I know my breath much better now, and that I have the ability to evolve it from threat to ally. I pledge to keep this up and make panic attacks a thing of the past.

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